History's Secret Heroes: Series 1: Arslan Rezniqi and the Besa Code

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Government troops have moved into several towns in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo after two days of unrest.

40 people have been injured in clashes in the south of the country between ethnic Albanians and the minority Serb community.

After Slobodan Milosevic became president of Serbia in 1989, he amended the constitution to strip Kosovo of its autonomy.

This prompted violent protests.

Internationally concern began to grow that the Balkans were heading for war.

In May 1990, the United States sent two congressmen to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

And they addressed from the second floor of the Grand Hotel in the center of Pristina the thousands of Albanians that had converged to listen to them.

The Serbian troops were there and they began to attack the crowd.

This is Shirley Cloys Dioguardi from the Albanian American Civic League.

She's also married to one of the congressmen who was there that day, the Republican Joseph Dioguardi.

From Kosovo, that's when they traveled to Albania.

They were the first U.S.

officials to enter Albania in almost 50 years.

In neighboring Albania, the congressmen met with the country's communist president, Ramiz Alia.

During their conversation, Diaguardi mentioned that his companion, the Democratic congressman Tom Lantos, was a Holocaust survivor.

Lantos was born into a Jewish family in Hungary.

As a teenager, he was imprisoned in a labor camp by the Nazis.

His family was murdered.

And Ramizalia,

hoping to ingratiate himself with Joe and Tom, over lunch the next day, Ramizalia hands them this thick file from the communist archives.

The file looked perfectly perfectly ordinary.

When they opened it though, it was full of documents dating back to World War II.

Newspaper clippings and photographs and letters addressed to Albanians.

Under communist rule, the letters had been intercepted before they could reach their intended recipients.

Joe suddenly realized they were sent by Jews who were trying to reach the Albanians who'd saved them.

Albania was one of the few European countries that had a larger Jewish population at the end of the war than it had at the beginning.

They began with 300 Jews who were living in Albania for, going back for thousands of years, to more than 3,000 Jews who had been saved.

Across Nazi and fascist Europe, Hitler's final solution, the Holocaust, was frighteningly efficient.

In Albania, though, ordinary people rescued thousands of Jews who were fleeing Germany, Austria, and the Nazi-occupied Balkans.

Families took Jews into their families, fed them, took care of them, hid them, and whenever things became more dangerous, they would find ways to move them to other locations.

Many of those who helped the refugees were perfectly ordinary people.

One man, Arslan Reznici, was a food merchant.

He risked his life and his family to save literally hundreds of Jewish refugees.

I'm Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Secret Heroes.

True stories of deception, acts of resistance, and courage from World War II.

Arslan Rosnici and the Bessa Code

Growing up in Pristina in the 1990s, Leka Rosnici heard plenty of stories about his great-grandfather.

Well, of course I never met him, but I was all the time aware of his character.

They called him Father Arslan.

So first of all, he was a trader, he was a merchant, and

he was trading agricultural products such as beans and corn and fruits.

Among the local farmers, Arslan Reznici was well liked and considered a fair dealer.

He lived in Dechan, a town in the west of Kosovo.

The population of the Balkans is made up of a jumble of linguistic, ethnic and religious groups.

Over the last century, the lines drawn on maps to define borders in this region have changed a lot.

At the beginning of the Second World War, much of what is now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia made up the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Kosovo, where Arslan Reznici lived, is in the heart of this region.

It is now bordered by Serbia to the north, Macedonia to the south, Montenegro to the northwest, and Albania to the west.

At the time, though, it was part of Yugoslavia.

Albania was a separate, independent kingdom.

Riznici traded across these borders.

He came from a large family in Dečan, in the Kosovan part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, just 20 miles from Albania.

He loved the nature because on that part of Kosovo there are very high mountains, so he loved that.

He never wanted to go and live

in the capital or something because he adored nature.

And in personal level, his favorite drink was cognac.

As a merchant, Reznici mixed with people of all faiths, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Jews.

His family was Muslim, the majority religion in Kosovo, but he considered himself first and foremost an Albanian, part of a proud and storied culture going back centuries.

As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Balkans could not escape the shockwaves.

Some Jews began to seek refuge in Albania from 1933.

In 1938, Albania's King Zog offered political asylum to more than 300 Jews fleeing persecution in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia.

These refugees were granted Albanian citizenship.

But this would prove to be short-lived.

April 7th, 1939, Italy invades Albania.

The king flees, they bring a puppet government.

Once again, the civilized world stands breathless at the latest coup of the Axis powers of Europe.

Albania has been taken under the protection of fascist Italy.

That means that warships, troops, and bombing planes have crossed the Adriatic and another name has been crossed off the map.

King Zark has fled and his 23 year old wife Queen Geraldine suffered a nightmare journey to Greece when her baby was only two days old.

With Albania now under the orders of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, it became harder for Jews to enter the country.

Yet as Ruznichi knew, Albania and nearby Kosovo remained sought-after destinations for those attempting to flee persecution.

He as a merchant he was cooperating a lot with

Jewish traders, so most of his business partners were Jewish from Macedonia and from Greece.

Resnicci received messages from three Jewish traders in Skopje around 150 kilometers southeast of Dechan.

They could see what was happening to Jews in Germany and they feared for their safety.

Resnicci and his fellow merchants sent a man to pick these three families up in Skopje and drive them to Dechan.

There, Resnicci opened his own home to them.

So it was a stone house by the main road.

It had two stores on the ground floor.

One of them served and was the office of Aslan.

And on the upper floor, the first floor, there were three rooms.

And then, so there was basically where he lived.

The Resnichi house was set in large grounds, including a well where villagers collected drinking water.

The family grew fruit and vegetables and stored them in a warehouse.

It could accommodate guests, but perhaps not this many.

So initially they were sheltered in our family house, but as the house was not so big to receive three families with wives and children, so my family then they built a house, a separate house in which they will be sheltered and to have more space.

And the house was built very fast.

in about three or four months.

The three families living in this new house were the Natans, the Cohens and the Confortis.

They became firm friends of the Riznici family.

When Riznici's son, Mustafa, got married, one of the refugees, a tailor, made his wife's wedding dress.

And then they stayed there for more than a year

until eventually they fled to Albania.

The majority of Jews arriving in Albania or Kosovo hid in villages in the mountains.

In cities, they might be picked up by a search.

In In remote locations, they were very unlikely to be noticed by the authorities at all.

Sometimes they didn't even have to hide.

They were integrating immediately Jews that were arriving in Albania in a way that, for example, if there was a store, they would immediately say that, yeah, he's my worker.

According to his great-grandson Leka, Aslan Reznici loved to provide for his guests.

Because there is a saying, if I would translate it roughly from Albanian, bread, salt, and heart,

which means that even if it is only bread and salt, we share it with heart.

Behind Resnicci's generosity lay a strict moral code, emphasizing compassion and tolerance.

Besa means pledge of honor.

Within Albanian customary law, it dates back to at least the 15th century in the oral tradition.

It mandates an incredibly strong commitment to a cause and endures down the generations.

Besa inextricably links personal honor and respect for inequality with others, and it involves something quite unique, and that's uncompromising protection of a guest.

And that's even to the point of risking one's own life.

Vesa is the code of honor, that is the highest level of promise that an Albanian could give you.

So, whoever approached your house or approached you for help, Albanian house is first of God,

then of the guest.

But guest is whoever just shows up on the door because in the concept, in tradition, it is that it can be even God that can knock on your door.

When Resnicci gave Besa to a Jewish family, he was making a pact.

If you gave someone Besa, if an Albanian would give Besa to someone, and then if he or she betrays then this reputation, honor and also face

as we say would be lost.

Resnicci's BeSa was no secret.

His neighbors in Deshan knew exactly what he was doing.

In fact, they helped him.

If anyone heard that police or the army were carrying out searches, they immediately told Resnicci.

So he in turn would warn his guests.

And then he would send them

as the villages are connected garden by garden, field by field, and he would send them to a neighboring village.

They would be sheltered there for two or three days.

And then when the risk passed, he would bring them again back home.

Resnicci would be tested in another way.

During the war, there were outbreaks of disease.

In early 1941, three members of Resnicci's family had contracted typhoid fever and died.

Now, his only son, Mustafa, was seriously ill.

Around this time on the 6th of April 1941 the kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded simultaneously by Germany, Italy and their ally Hungary.

The Germans occupied Serbia and the eastern side of Croatia.

So when the Germans started occupying my grandfather Chaim that was a medical doctor he was part of a military force that

was sent to fight against the Germans in the area of Kosovo.

This is Shelley Levi.

Her grandfather was Chaim Abravanel, a specialist in infectious diseases.

At this time he was also fighting against the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia.

Dr.

Abravanel was passing through Dechan with his military unit.

One day from the windows, because the family house in Dechan was at the main street, so one day the Jewish families see Dr.

Chaim passing by.

One of the Jewish refugees hiding in the Resnicci house recognized Dr.

Abravanel.

They went to Aslan Riznici.

They told him that we just saw passing by a very famous doctor from Skopje, Dr.

Chaim Abravanel, and if you manage to go and bring him to your house,

we are sure that he will be able to treat your son.

Riznici approached Dr.

Abravanel and asked him to treat his son, Mustafa.

That was in a very dangerous situation because of the typhoid

and my grandfather cured him.

Arslan Reznichi was grateful to Dr.

Abravanel for saving his son's life but had no idea how soon he would repay the favor.

Weeks later, Dr.

Abravanel's military unit was taken prisoner by the Nazis in Kosovo.

They were put in a prisoner of war camp.

When Arslan Reznichi heard about this, he knew that he had to rescue Dr.

Abravanel.

Reznici went to the camp in person.

He urged the doctor to leave, but the doctor was afraid to do so.

Reznichi then appealed to the unit commander to release the doctor.

The unit commander refused, saying that Dr.

Abravanel was now a prisoner of war.

Knowing that the doctor was at great risk, Reznichi effectively had no choice but to kidnap him and bring him to his home.

Resnicci had thought ahead and brought traditional Albanian clothing with him.

Some white, very thick pants with black stripes and then you have a white hat called pis

and also some jacket that is again combination of white, black and red.

When he arrived in Dechan, the doctor changed into the Albanian clothing to blend into his new surroundings.

He buried his military uniform in the garden.

And so the two men saved each other.

Dr.

Abravanel had saved Resnicci from losing his son, and now Resnicci saved Dr.

Abravanel from Nazi captivity.

And Dr.

Aim, for the five or six months that he continued to stay in our family house, he continued to treat local population free of charge and all the time he was saying, I'm staying for free in Aslan's house, so there is no need to pay.

During this time, Dr.

Abravanel's wife remained in Skopje.

When Dr.

Abravanel needed to return to Skopje, Reznici offered to take him there himself in his horse-drawn carriage.

He knew which backroads to take to avoid checkpoints.

Three days later, when they arrived at Abravanel's house, Reznici knocked on the door.

The doctor's wife, Berta, was reluctant to answer.

He told her that, I am Aslan and I am here with Dr.

Chaim.

Unconvinced, she started shouting.

No, go away, they came, they took him, probably they sent him to camps or killed killed him.

Go away, you came to make a joke with an old lady.

Berta Abravenel refused to open the door.

And then Dr.

Haim whistles,

and they had somehow a specific whistle inside the family, and then she recognized him whistling, and she opens the door.

With the Abravenel family reunited, Reznici returned to Dijan.

He continued to take in Jewish guests.

In 1943, though, the political situation changed again.

Italy surrendered to the Allies.

As Italian control collapsed, the Nazis occupied Albania and Kosovo in their place.

Reznici and his guests faced a new and terrible threat.

So if at some point Aslan would be betrayed and he would be found that he is sheltering Jews in his house, with no doubt he would be shot.

Not only of course, for sure, then, the Jewish families, but also him and his family.

Despite this, Reznici continued to offer help and support to his Jewish guests.

As well as providing accommodation, he paid for transport for those who are unable to afford the crossing into Albania.

With the help of a friend who was secretary for the municipality, he forged identity papers for Jewish refugees.

When the Nazis occupied Albania, they demanded that Albanian authorities provided them with lists of Jews to be deported.

The authorities refused.

In her work for the Albanian-American Civic League, Shirley Deguardi has come across numerous stories of Jewish people hiding in deserted houses.

Of course, in many places, because of the presence of Nazis nearby, A great deal of time these Jews had to remain in hiding even within Albanian households.

Refugees were hidden in underground bunkers and mountain caves.

Some Albanians went to extraordinary lengths to protect their guests.

In the town of Porka, in northern Albania, a merchant named Ali Sheikha Pashkai owned the only general store in the area.

There was a big train coming through with Albanian prisoners being sent basically out to hard labor.

On board this train were 19 Albanians and one Jewish man who was going to be shot.

The Nazi soldiers guarding them were tired and in search of somewhere to rest, so they stopped at Pashkai's shop.

When Pashkai realized the Jewish man was condemned to death, he plied the soldiers with wine until they were drunk.

When he did that, he handed this Jewish person a melon, and in it, he concealed this message saying, look, you know, flee, hide in the woods, and wait, I'll come to get you.

And then the Nazis finally discovered that the Jew was missing and they pinned Ali against a wall.

And four times the Nazis put a gun to his head and threatened him with death, but he continued to deny what he had done.

The soldiers gave up and left Pashkai in his shop.

And when they finally left, he retrieved the Jew in the woods and then went on to hide him for two years.

Arslan Reznici was not the only Albanian to help refugees, but he was among the most most prolific.

He helped hundreds to escape.

Leka Riznici's grandfather, Mustafa, was Arslan Reznichi's son, who Dr.

Abravanel had saved from typhoid.

Mustafa used to share his father's wartime stories.

I asked him, was Arslan ever betrayed?

Was he ever at risk of being found that he's sheltering Jews?

And there was one moment.

He said that a friend of his from primary school that he didn't see him for so more than 10 or 15 years, he just appeared one day in his office.

Resnichi greeted his old friend and led him into his office.

And this initial conversation, how are you?

How is the family and everything?

And Aslan was answering like very properly and so on.

And then at one point, this his friend asks him, oh, and how are the guests in your house?

Resnichi hesitated.

It felt like an odd question to bring up in conversation.

And then Aslan realizes that his appearance after so many years is not coincidental.

Perhaps he was a spy.

Resnicci had heard stories of civilians in the Balkans collaborating with the Nazis.

He addressed his friend.

These are the exact words as my grandfather told me.

Listen to me.

If something happens to my family or people in my house, I know that it comes from you.

Now go away and never appear anymore.

Of course the word was spread that there is a house sheltering Jews because that is also why other Jewish refugees as grandfather mentioned were arriving in the house without even knowing who Aslan is but they knew that there is a house that Jews can be sheltered for some time until to go to Albania.

So this was the most dangerous moment.

But yet again, Bessa, only Bessa.

Others didn't allow my great-grandfather to betray Jewish refugees because he promised them.

He gave them his besa that they are going to be safe in his house.

And that's it.

That is how the level of tradition and promise is.

Jewish families in Skopje, like the Abravanals, were in danger.

In March 1943, many Macedonian Jews were rounded up.

They were transported to the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland.

More than 120 people from our family were

perished in the Holocaust.

You know, it was very fast and immediate.

Jewish doctors and pharmacists were spared deportation because their medical expertise was required.

So all the medical doctors survived with their families.

After the war, The Resnicis and the Abravanel families never forgot what they had done for each other.

The story of double surviving of these two families made them have very strong feelings

between the families.

The families often wrote to each other.

Occasionally, the Resnicis visited the Abravanels.

So on this picture what we see is...

There's a photograph of them together taken in 1957.

The families look relaxed in each other's presence, sitting outdoors in the sunshine.

Five years later, though, tragedy struck.

I was seven, it was summertime, it was July.

On the night of the 25th of July, 1963, Shelley was staying with her grandparents, Chaim and Berta Abravanal, in the city of Bitola.

At 5.17 a.m.

the next morning, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 hit Skopje.

1,070 people were killed, 4,000 more injured.

So I remember when I wake up early in the morning at about 7 or something, and my grandmother told me that there was an earthquake in Skopje and that the grandfather went to Skopje to to help

in the delegation of medical doctors to give support there.

And actually, it was the first time of collaboration between East and West after the Second World War.

Shelley waited for her parents to return.

A little bit later, my grandparents sent me to stay with a friend, and then I started understanding that something is happening.

It was a secret, they didn't tell me.

For a very, very long time, I didn't know that my parents were dead.

It was too painful for Chaim and Berta Abravanel to stay in the Balkans.

They decided to take their granddaughter Shelly and relocate to Israel.

Shelley grew up hearing stories of Arslan Reznici, the man who saved her grandfather from the Nazis.

Reznici died in 1972.

Twelve years later, Dr.

Abravanel died.

The families lost contact.

In 1999, at the height of the Kosovan conflict, Leka Reznici, his parents and his grandfather Mustafa were deported by Serbian forces to northern Macedonia.

But one day my grandfather gets a phone call from Jewish community of Macedonia

that somebody is looking for you

from Israel with a picture of Aslan.

It was Shelly.

Dr.

Abravanal's granddaughter.

Now she wanted to help us because Israeli government announced that they are going to receive refugees from camps that escaped from Kosovo.

In a striking echo of history, Shelley offered to accommodate the Rosnici family in Israel.

Yet the Rosnicis chose to return to Kosovo where they had a family business.

Meanwhile, Congressman Lantos and Dioguarti had found themselves deeply affected by the secret file they had been given by the President of Albania.

Both men were determined to honor the work of Albanians like Arslan Reznici in rescuing Jewish refugees during the war.

In 2008, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, declared Arlan Reznici righteous among the nations.

This honorific recognizes non-Jews who saved Jews from the Holocaust for altruistic reasons.

According to the New York Times, Reznici personally transported 400 Jewish people to Dechan, probably saving their lives.

In Pristina, Mustafa accepted the award on his father's behalf.

Weeks after the ceremony, though, he too died.

And now I am continuing his legacy, as he made me promise on his deathbed that I will continue this work, which I am.

So I am now the fourth generation of Rescuer.

Arcelan Reznici's Bessa endures.

Everything that I do, it serves his memory,

serves me as an example that I try to follow even now.

History Secret Heroes is a BBC Studios podcast production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

It's narrated by me, Helena Bonnam Carter.

The series producers are Amy Liebervitz and Clem Hitchcock.

Episode 2 was co-produced by Elena Buateng.

Additional research, production and fact-checking by Sophie McQuillen, Fanby Bacari, Michaela Carmichael and Caitlyn Wraith.

It's written by Alex von Tunselmann.

The executive producer and editor is Paul Smith.

The development producer is Bushra Siddique.

Anya Saunders is the development executive.

Our theme is composed by Jeremy Walmsley.

The mix engineer is Arlie Adlington.

Elena Boateng is the production manager.

Juliette Harvey is the production coordinator.

Laura Jordan-Raowell is the production executive.

Legal and business affairs advice from Edward Murdoch.

The editorial policy advisor is Sarah Nelson.

The creative director of BBC Studios Factual Podcasts is Georgia Mosley.

The Commissioner for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds is Rhiann Roberts and the Assistant Commissioner is Abigail Willer.

Archive from BBC, Critical Past, Pathé News, Reuters, C-SPAN and the US Army Women's Museum.

Thanks to Cassian Harrison, Greg Steiger, Helen Marley Hutchison, Bina Katani, Multitrack, Lucy Bannister, James Murray, Lucy Bell, Kevin Wilson, Kate Plumpton, and Molly Milton.

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Listen on BBC Sounds.

This fall, let your home smell as good as it looks.

Pura's app-controlled diffusers bring you premium scents from brands like Nest New York, Capri Blue, and Anthropology.

From Spice Pumpkin to Whitewoods, your fall favorites are just a tap away.

It's home fragrance that feels as elevated as it smells, and right now, it's the perfect time to stock up.

Visit Pura.com and bring home the best scents of the season.